In recent years, the trend of younger hotel customers has become more and more obvious, and this generation has shown higher acceptance and participation in the hotel membership system, with data showing that more than 60% of Gen Z consumers prefer to book hotels directly through brand membership channels, and they also prefer to delve into the hotel membership system to get better accommodation rights and experiences.
Recently, the "Annual Member Day" activity of LIFE Club, a subsidiary of BTG Homeinn Hotel Group, was officially launched. From July 15th to July 24th, it was warmly sought after by members through the doubling of the club's growth value, the rainbow wish-winning bean lottery for the Zhou Tianwang concert tickets and colorful lifestyle benefits.
From July 24th to August 11th, this summer's Paris sports event relay will be launched, such as LIFE Club members can win prizes through interactive games such as Rainbow Wishing Beans and Sports Encyclopedia Quiz, and continue to draw growth value doubling cards...... Diversified content and strong interactive gameplay have made the "Annual Member Day" attract much attention since its launch. It is understood that the event has attracted the attention of nearly 100,000 members, and the active performance of members during the event is 1.5 times that of the same period last year, which is expected to bring eye-catching marketing conversion to this summer vacation. Milestone believes that membership activities with strong interactive attributes and high topicality may become the only way for the hotel group's membership system to improve the activity of Guanqu members, promote marketing conversion and explore the growth of member operations.
In the past two years, there has been a voice in the hotel industry that "young people nowadays are getting harder and harder to please". In fact, in order to meet the complex and changeable consumption needs of young people, major hotel groups have upgraded their membership systems, trying to retain customers and increase repurchase by expanding membership rights and strengthening the perception of rights and interests, but the effect does not seem to be obvious.
Milestone summarized and found that there are the following user pain points that have not been solved: one of the problems, more rights and interests do not mean that the rights and interests are good. At present, the rights and interests system of many membership systems is too complex, and it is difficult for consumers to directly find the core rights and interests, that is, the core needs of staying in the hotel, such as how much the hotel discount, what time to check out, and whether to provide breakfast, etc., are not clear in the membership system; The second problem is that young people need to have a better experience and save money. Free room upgrade has become the most anticipated surprise benefit for young people when they stay in, but most hotel membership systems are either secretive about the rules of room upgrades, or directly limit the number of times; The third problem is that the method of upgrading and relegation is single and increasingly difficult. In fact, the upgrade and maintenance of hotel members is mainly formed by the accumulation of room nights, and check-in is basically the only way to improve points. However, consumers are no longer willing to pay for this model, simply put, the method of accumulation of points is too single, and the speed of points accumulation is too slow, and consumers do not have a "sense of immediate feedback", which is obviously particularly important in the current fast-paced consumption.
However, these pain points have been addressed in places such as the LIFE Club. In the membership system of LIFE Club, "growth value" is an important indicator for member maintenance and promotion, and "LIFE" club members have multiple channels for accumulating growth value. For example, it can be accumulated by booking hotels through BTG Homeinns Guanqu or on BTG Homeinns's cross-border e-commerce platform - the first free global purchase.
During the "Annual Member Day", if LIFE Club members only need to receive the "Stay Growth Value Doubling Card" on the activity page of BTG Homeinns Guanqu according to the activity rules, and successfully book a hotel through BTG Homeinns Guanqu after receiving it, the member account can automatically accumulate the doubled growth value after leaving the hotel, so as to quickly realize the upgrade and maintenance of membership levels.
In addition, if LIFE Club uses Wishing Beans as the circulation "currency" of rights and interests points, and transfers the autonomy of rights and interests to consumers, consumers can not only accumulate Wishing Beans in multiple membership activities such as online and offline, but also freely use Wishing Beans for free room upgrades and late check-outs for unlimited times. That is to say, as long as consumers accumulate enough wish-wishing beans, they can realize the wish of unlimited free house upgrades throughout the year.
As one of the important links of the LIFE Club, the "Annual Membership Day" has set up a fun lottery game for the members of the LIFE Club. After a week of in-depth exploration, Milestone discovered two highlights of this interactive game: one is the simple way to participate, and the other is the wide coverage of event rewards. Through interesting games and surprise benefits such as concerts, movies, eating, drinking and playing, we can establish an emotional connection between consumers and lifestyle scenes such as LIFE, and meet their primary goal of "pleasing themselves", so as to meet the emotional value of consumers.
From July 24, the "Annual Membership Day" combines sports culture with interesting activities, which not only effectively reduces the difficulty of users' participation, simplifies the user's experience path, but also strengthens the emotional bond between members and the brand with lifestyle benefits. Milestone's research found that behind the seemingly simple lottery game, it actually reflects the thinking of LIFE Club on building a diversified local life for members and creating a better life in the whole ecology, which has the underlying logic of "originating from accommodation, not only accommodation". Compared with the traditional membership system that only focuses on hotel accommodation consumption scenarios, this set of logic has unique advantages:
First, full coverage of lifestyle scenes. It can be seen from the prize pool of the lottery game that for example, the LIFE Club has long provided members with no longer a single accommodation product, but has created a diversified consumption scene that is in line with the lifestyle of young people. In fact, since the establishment of the LIFE Club, it has never stopped broadening the boundaries of the membership system, providing members with more than 230 cross-border life rights and interests to help members break through the limitations of "accommodation space".
The second is the user's thinking that is full of emotional value. Emotional value refers to the ability to give people good feelings. In the view of LIFE Club, the key to full emotional value for members lies in strong user thinking. The benefits such as tickets to the Zhou Tianwang concert as prizes, and the fun linkage with the Paris sports event, have greatly satisfied the young people's beautiful yearning for cultural and entertainment consumption. Milestone noticed that the setting of these activities is essentially "thinking what users think, playing what users play", and carrying the emotional needs of consumers at different levels and in different scenarios through the "Annual Member Day", and giving corresponding feedback, which may be the fundamental reason why LIFE Club is widely acclaimed.
"China's consumer market and marketing concepts have undergone several changes since 1987, and have completed the transformation from the earliest emphasis on product sales to meeting customer needs and then managing the emotional value of users." Zhang Shujuan, Deputy General Manager of BTG Hotels Group, Executive Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer of Homeinns Hotel Group, emphasized at the 13th Milestone Brand Development Conference that hotels under the new trend need to complete the upgrade from "space provider" to "life advocate", and the hotel membership system should reshape the relationship with users to further improve user stickiness.
Although it seems that most hotel membership systems are exploring the possibility of "point accumulation and scene extension", the problem of how to make scenes related to scenes and form an effective closed loop is still difficult to solve. Combined with the "Annual Member Day" series of activities launched by LIFE Club, Milestone has found its solution to this problem - to connect the entire membership ecology of LIFE Club with flowing wish-wish beans to build a better lifestyle for consumers.
In fact, this logic has a very simple economic principle, that is, the wish-wish bean can be compared to money, which can not only be used as a medium of exchange, but also can be stored as value, and its liquidity ensures that it can be quickly transferred between people and scenes, scenes and scenes, and promotes the convenience and autonomy of consumption. However, the reason why Ruwish Bean can operate smoothly in the ecosystem of Ru LIFE Club is closely related to the core of Ru LIFE Club's continuous strengthening of membership value. How to understand?
First, for example, the LIFE club has richer boundary breakthroughs and wider scene extensions. In fact, in the past few years, such as LIFE Club has been broadening the breadth of member experience, including the injection of 230+ cross-border life rights and interests, enriching the diverse life experience of members, and at the same time carrying out diversified local life around the young generation of business people, integrating talk shows, coffee classes, reading clubs, tastings, e-sports competitions and other life formats into the hotel scene, so that members can have a more colorful member experience, and the ongoing "Annual Member Day" The event also highlights the possibility of scenarios such as the continuous extension of the LIFE club, so that Ruwish Bean has more online and offline application scenarios. At the same time, thanks to BTG Homeinn Hotel Group's more than 151 million member traffic, Ruwish Bean has a larger flow space and applicable scenarios, and can achieve more dimensional membership value, which cannot be achieved by the traditional hotel membership system.
Second, more precise member incentives and a higher frequency loyalty cycle. The underlying logic of the success of the hotel membership system lies in allowing users to go from the initial attempt to satisfaction, to loyalty, and finally to form a positive feedback loop, which is also the key to the popularity of LIFE Club. On the one hand, it has a more accurate membership incentive model. Taking the ongoing "Annual Membership Day" as an example, LIFE Club has accurate insight into the most popular phenomena such as eating, drinking, playing, and having fun, and provides consumers with more accurate membership benefits.
On the other hand, it is to maintain the connection with members and enhance the visibility and intimacy of the brand through a more frequent loyalty cycle. Milestone noticed that in addition to the recent "Annual Membership Day", such as the LIFE Club, there are also high-frequency membership services such as "Wonderful Friday", an exclusive members' day every Friday. On Friday, members can redeem the rights of 10 lifestyle themes such as coffee, movies, and sports for as little as 5 wish-a-wish beans. At the same time, for example, the official channel of LIFE Club has also set up fixed columns such as "15 Member Day" and "Travel Research Institute" on the 15th of each month, which can improve user participation and accelerate the flow of wish-seeking beans through prize-winning topics and prize-winning interactions.
According to Milestone, since BTG Homeinns officially announced the renewal and upgrading of its membership system last year, the number of users of Ruwish Beans has increased by more than 180% compared with the same period last year, and the average check-in frequency of members has also increased by 200%. With the help of the full-scene circulation of Ruwish Beans in the LIFE member ecology, such as LIFE Club, has achieved remarkable growth in core dimensions such as the number of members, activity, and repurchase rate, setting up a new user operation sample for the industry.
It can be seen that the improvement of the market environment and the change of consumption trends have brought more complex and changeable consumer demand, and these changes require that the core competitiveness of the business model of the hotel group in the future must revolve around the scenarios of products, services, and experiences. The so-called sincerity is nirvana, for example, LIFE Club uses actual cases to tell the industry, perhaps it is not that young people are too difficult to do, but that the hotel membership system should accurately understand the core demands of young people, and sincerely provide more practical membership rights. When young people begin to build their own "good life" in the LIFE Club, the LIFE Club is also rewriting the new rules of hotel membership operation and growth.
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